Hi Colin

The immigration decisions came out on 28th June, so the time limit issue must a be a significant problem. Even more so when you read the decision of the law soc JR case where they appear to suggest that the time limit should have run from when the tender docs were published.

I have no idea of their grounds but.....in many areas of the country the whole thing turned on whether you employed a level 3 accredited adviser. It was at no point suggested that this was going to be in there, there was no need for it before the tender round began and it was virtually impossible to sort it between the tender opening and closing. However it may not been quite as difficult as lscstress explained the panel mebership in the family tender issue in another thread.

Basically in many areas of the country the orgnaisations who had a level 3 got all they asked for and the rest shared the crumbs.

In the Greater Manchester area (our PA) we got approx 25% of what we asked for. We scored a maximum on every selection criteria save the level 3 accreditaion one. The test was whether the organisation had a level 3 adviser, so if say a national organisation had one employed in say Halifax or even Truro, then their bid in the Greater Manchester area could score a max.


Rich

Hi crc

Yes of course you are absolutely right. The mere aplication got the extra point. But that still would not be enough to score a maximum.

"which was clearly something that everyone had time to do between the tender being published and the tender closing."

Arguably yes. Having said that, as I am sure you know, on the application form there was a large amount of evidence to submit, including a work portfolio, case law, media reports, testimonials, evidence of published work etc etc. On the one hand the application form could be submitted in the full knowledge that it would fail but the extra point would then be scored. There then becomes a question or some would argue, morality, and others would argue practiacilty and pragmatics of putting a 'non genuine' application in for the purpose simply of scoring the point.

I wonder how many non genuine applications for leave to appeal went in against benefit tribunal decisions in the tender period to try to get the 10?

Having said all that as you correctly points out, in many of the major PA there was at least one bidder who actually had a level 3 person employed at somehwere in their organisation somewhere in the country. Others may have more knowledge but I am not sure that the extra point for the application determined the outcome in many cases- though i stand to be corrected on that. Thus the question would be whether there was time to get the application process completed in order to score a maximum. There was as you say clearly time to make the application though. I am not sure how long the full process takes?


One of the many interesting features of the law soc JR was the issue of the firm that supported the LSC and said somehting along the lines of 'well it was kinda easy, all you had to do was employ a panel member for 3.5 hours per week etc etc' - form my reading of the decision i didnt appear that that went down particualrly well with the judges.


I am not sure that those kind of practices were the intention of the tender process, though it is blatantly obvious that it was likely to encourage that type of behaviour.

What is for sure is that should there ever be another tender like this one then Luis Suarez will be top of my list to come and write the bids for me


Rich

thanks chris

yes in that context i completely see where you are coming from. my original post was just general synopsis/assumption/guesswork of the situation immigration generally rather than being specific to greater manchester.

am i correct in thinking that in order to apply for level three that one of the basic conditions was that you had to have an average of over 70% and a minimum score of 65% in any of the exams?

rich

wow impressive stuff- I hadnt realised we were in such esteemed company and congratulations to you!

Aint ilegal great??

The stats you cited are v interesting re the number of applications. I would be very interested to know whether there were any applications for the sake purely of the bid round- ie applications that would clearly fail. I guess we will never know (and may not want to know). No one can argue with an application made for the bid round to get the point where the applicant goes on to complete and become accredited at level 3. And like you say if you have a level 3 in the office that relates to then thats fair enough.

We have gone slightly off topic, but having had the benefit of this conversation i am inclined to agree that the real argument/question is actually the fact that the level 3 person can be located anywhere in the country- it really favours national large national organisation- the debate remains whether its rational and justified as a selection criteria in that format.


Rich